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Seweryn Aszkenazy 19Feb2013 Yiddish Book Center

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Seweryn Aszkenazy 19Feb2013 Yiddish Book Center

by
Yiddish Book Center (Chad)

Usage
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 InternationalCreative Commons Licensebync
Topics
Yiddish Book Center, National Yiddish Book Center, Wexler Oral History Project, nybc, ybc, Yiddish, Jewish culture, Family history, stories about ancestors, Jewish Identity, Childhood, shabbat, shabbes, sabbath, World War Two, Other languages, Literature, Russia, Visual Arts, Education, Family traditions, Yiddish language, Immigration, Migration, Travel, Transmission, Roots, heritage, Hebrew, Seweryn Aszkenazy, Warsaw, Poland, Beit Polska Project,
Language
English
Seweryn Aszkenazy, developer, was interviewed by Agnieszka Ilwicka on February 19, 2013 in Beverly Hills, California.

To learn more about the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project, visit:
http://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/tell-your-story

Seweryn Aszkenazy Oral History Interview, interviewed by Agnieszka Ilwicka, Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project, Beverly Hills, CA, February 19, 2013. Video recording, [https://archive.org/details/SewerynAszkenazy19feb2013YiddishBookCenter] ( [date accessed] )
Abstract
Seweryn Aszkenazy, developer and child Holocaust survivor, was interviewed by Agnieszka Ilwicka on February 19, 2013 in Beverly Hills, California. He was born in Ternapol, Poland in 1936. He talks about his family's deep Jewish roots in Poland. His father was very learned and everyone in his home spoke numerous languages. Seweryn lived a very comfortable life as a young child in a lovely apartment; his parents were assimilated, identified with an aristocratic Austrian style, and preferred to speak German. When he was three, the Russians invaded Poland and took over their apartment and store. To avoid being sent to Siberia, the family moved to Trembowla, where his father got a job managing a stone quarry, and then moved back to their apartment in Ternapol. He remembers being in a truck and seeing above him the face of a German fighter pilot who apparently decided not to target them when he saw Seweryn and his brother inside. Soon the family was moved with other Jews to the Tarnapol ghetto; it became clear to the wealthier Jews that they were in the same boat as the poor ones. The ghetto was liquidated a year later, and his family was able to escape. They stayed with several sympathetic Poles, and then for almost two years in a bunker his father had built under a Polish family's house. Seweryn objects to the stereotype that all Poles were anti-Semites as his experience does not support this. In the bunker, his father figured out how to get them good ventilation and electricity. Seweryn recalls spending most of the time reading, listening to the radio, learning to speak French, and playing chess. When they returned home after being liberated, they found that almost no Jews had survived. Seweryn feels that Jewish teachings say that you cannot condemn young people for the sins of their parents or grandparents. He describes his work with Beit Warszawa and Beit Polska, which aim to foster Jewish life in Poland. Seweryn attributes Jews' uniqueness to the fact that learning was the focus of generations of their ancestors—there must be some reason why so many of the world's great thinkers were and are Jews. Seweryn feels that Yiddish is a wonderful, "juicy" language, but he fears that it will not come back. On the other hand, unlike other dying languages, it has a body of literature which leaves a record of Jewish life in Poland – this will remain. Often one needs many words to try to define a Yiddish word and many sentences to capture the subtlety of a Yiddish sentence. He believes that the future of Yiddish may reside in Poland rather than in America. Seweryn's advice to future generations is to learn history so that we can understand today and plan for tomorrow.
Addeddate
2014-08-15 18:28:34.579665
Citation
Seweryn Aszkenazy Oral History Interview, interviewed by Agnieszka Ilwicka, Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project, Beverly Hills, CA, February 19, 2013. Video recording, [URL of interview] ( [date accessed] )
Controlled-themes
Family histories | Jewish Identity | Childhood | World War II | Languages | Literature | Russia | Visual arts | Education | Family traditions | Yiddish language | Immigration and migration | Travel | Cultural transmission | Cultural heritage | Hebrew | Shabbos
Excerpts
2802, 2803, 2804, 2805, 2806, 2807
Geographic-themes
Warszawa, Poland | Poland | Russia
Identifier
SewerynAszkenazy19feb2013YiddishBookCenter
Interview-date
2/19/2013
Interview-location
Beverly Hills, California
Narrator-birth-place
Tarnopol, Poland
Narrator-birth-year
1936
Narrator-first-name
Seweryn

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